The 2012-2013 Season
The 2012-2013 game is called VEX Sack Attack. Robots score points by placing the green and yellow bean bags in their alliance's goals, by winning the Autonomous Bonus and, by parking on their colored starting tile at the end of the match. This game presents many new challenges that we have designed our robot to overcome. Our strategy is to score many bean bags in our goals at the start of the match, and then steal them from the opponents' goals and place them in ours, for a larger point swing.
Pontiac Tournament
Our new robot, "HAL," is designed to pick up bean bags and score them, as well as steal them from the opponents' goals. At this tournament, we used Mecanum Wheels, which have special rollers on them that allow our robot to move in any direction without turning. The rollers often get stuck on sacks, however, so our wheels are protected by super-low skirting that keeps the sacks from ever getting to the wheels.
Our first match of the season:
Our second match of the season:
The first match of the Final Round (we won 106-14):
MSU State Championships
Over the course of the season, our design evolved through many iterations. Our intake was made more powerful, our chassis was made lighter, our arm was modified for better descoring, and we added a pneumatic high-goal mechanism for more points.